Wed, 10th Mar 2010 by Alfie.

These are the currently proposed maps for our group to play on Wednesdays, 8pm GMT.

The campaign titles are links to download sites. Download, unpack, double-click the VPK file to install.

For most L4D2 maps you will need to install the ‘Left 4 Dead 2 Add-on Support’ tool. Without this tool installed you are likely to see pink textures and missing model errors on player-made maps (amongst other issues): In Steam; View->Tools->double-click ‘Left 4 Dead 2 Add-on Support’.

*Updated 02/03* Left 4 DeadCity II Campaign - Kill plenty of zombies starting in RiverSide (city) then battling through the Back Alleys, over a Draw Bridge, at a Water Plant and during the escape at the Subway Station.

*26/02* Dead On Time 2 - Apparently, the military has setup an evacuation outpost at the train station… may as well head there…

*25/02* 2 evil eyes l4d2 - You start off in the woods and you will come across swamps, rivers, bridges, a factory, a ghost town….can’t say too much!!

*19/02* dead air two - as the title suggest this is the 3d campaign from the first game. with that said, this is only to tide us over untill the pros on this site can finish theirs.

*20/01* No Mercy 2 - The ‘No Mercy’ campaign from L4D made playable in L4D2.

*17/01* Arena of the Dead 2 - Escort your companions across town and over the roof tops to the Arena. Hold off the legions of zombies until the Rescue Chopper arrives..

*17/12* Left 4 Cake 2 - Survivors find themselves imprisoned and must solve puzzles to advance through testing stages while defending themselves from the zombie infestation. Features: cooperative puzzles, random spawning puzzle objects, and changing paths.

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Tue, 2nd Mar 2010 by Alfie.

A Rube Goldberg Machine designed and built by the band for their music video. You just have to watch this

YouTube - OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - RGM version

I originally picked this up off a Facebook post by a friend (Charles) who had it linked from someone else, not sure where it originated.

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Tue, 2nd Mar 2010 by Alfie.

I’ve just finished playing Gears Of War 2 on the XBox 360.

I usually avoid FPS games on the console because I am a Keyboard/Mouse player and cannot get used to the controller but someone who recently got a 360 wanted to lend it to me, so I thought I’d give it a go.

Like similar games I’ve seen on consoles and some PC games recently, Gears 2 uses a recovery system for injuries, so if you are injured (indicated by a blood red cog symbol fading in on your screen) you duck back into cover and the cog gradually fades out to indicate that you are recovering. If you don’t take cover eventually you are incapacitated and can only crawl slowly in an attempt to reach a comrade who can revive you. If you fail to do that in a brief period you will die, game over, reload from last checkpoint. So, I had a chance at survival with my poor controller skills

The visual style is great; from gritty, city streets under siege, to deep underground tunnels, and hidden complexes, as well as outside scenes in mountains and forests.

Audio is exceptional; well voiced characters, well placed atmospheric sound effects, and some booming weapon sounds, help to get you in the mood.

The AI is good; whilst most grunt enemies use cover, and pop out to fire at you, they occasionally ‘displace’ so you can’t wait for them to pop up again at the same point and fire. Some heavier enemies just walk straight at you, but this fits the style of the semi-mindless ‘tanks’.

Gameplay is pretty good; the variety of action really helps to change this game from what could have been a ’shooter on rails’ to a fun challenge. You operate on foot your own, with a partner, or with a small group, at different points. There are several vehicle sections, with some quite unique ‘vehicles’ later on The choice of weapons allows for a range of tactical choices, from up close and personal to sniper range,with the ability to pick up dropped weapons so you can chop and change as required.

All in all, I had about 20 hours of fun running through this on normal mode. I’m strongly considering buying this and the first game to go back through it at a harder level.

Overall: Gears 2 gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

Posted in Xbox, Video Games | Print | No Comments »

Fri, 26th Feb 2010 by Alfie.

Welcome to another major site update.

A friend asked me if I could put an RSS feed on my site, so I set one up manually.  He then mentioned it would be good to have a comments system as well. I checked out my host’s site to see what I could cook up, but rather than manually build something with the minimal CGI on my package, or upgrade to some heavier grade hosting with full CGI/PHP, I found out that my host provides WordPress!

So, I have finally been dragged kicking and screaming into the fully Web 2.0 world with a blog. The WordPress implementation isn’t as customisable as I’d like, but does provide all the ‘pretty’ features and beats running my own server.

I will migrate across as much of the original content as possible, but I cannot  have both old and new on one domain for some reason

Enjoy

Posted in Site Updates | Print | 1 Comment »

Wed, 24th Feb 2010 by Alfie.

By popular demand (of at least one person!) I have added an RSS feed to the site.

I hadn’t bothered previously as updates were few and far between, but now I seem to be averaging 3 updates a month it might actually be worthwhile

Update: and within minutes I’ve been syndicated on LiveJournal!

Posted in Site Updates | Print | 2 Comments »

Mon, 22nd Feb 2010 by Alfie.

Since 9/11 we’ve often had ‘threat levels’ mentioned in the news, but what are the actual threat levels around the world?

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threat and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Fri, 22nd Jan 2010 by Alfie.

I’ve completed a major cleansing of the links section, but there’s still far too many for one page and I still haven’t got about to making it validate properly

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Tue, 19th Jan 2010 by Alfie.

Wii Sports has been bundled with the Wii since it’s first introduction in the UK I believe, so most people that have a Wii will have played one or all of the Wii Sports games. Our favourite, the game we keep coming back to, is Wii Sports Tennis.

The control method in Wii Sports Tennis, like most Wii games, is a basic simulation of the real life sport. You swing your controller like a racket at the right time to hit the ball. For some people who have actually played tennis it might be a bit frustrating at first, because you have to scale your actions to the represented size on screen. Long swings don’t always register as you’d expect, and the game actually responds better to short, twitchy wrist movements. But then, it’s much more fun to stand up and swing your arms about whilst lunging around the living room

The girlfriend and I have both got our Miis (Wii avatars) up to Pro level at tennis and play every day, averaging 5 - 7 ’sets’ of ‘best of 5′ games a day. In nearly three weeks of playing I’ve actually noticed my left bicep growing larger. What will it be like 6 months from now?

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Sat, 2nd Jan 2010 by Alfie.

I had toyed with the idea of getting a Wii some months back, but thought that as I already had an Xbox 360 it would be a bit too much of an indulgence. Then my girlfriend and I had a chance to play on the Wii Fit and Wii Sports at a friends house on New Years Eve. I knew then that we would have to have one.

The Wii Console bundle on sale at the moment is the Wii Sports bundle; including a console, controller, nunchuk, Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort which itself includes a MotionPlus adaptor (used by some of the games in Wii Sports Resort).

We also picked up a Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board and a second controller (Argos didn’t have extra nunchuks or MotionPlus adaptors seperately), a charging station for the controllers and 2 games bundles.

This has made the Wii a quite expensive purchase, but it is likely to get more usage from both my girlfriend and I than the Xbox 360 does at the moment.

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Mon, 30th Nov 2009 by Alfie.

It seems to have been difficult to get through the month without hearing or seeing something about Dragon Age: Origins as there has been a widespread advertising campaign on-line and on TV.

Having liked Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, also by Bioware, I had a look, and I have to say I’m impressed.

I don’t have a powerhouse PC yet it runs mostly smoothly on my rig with reasonable loading times (some of the bigger battles with lots of effects do cause a bit of stuttering at times, but not unplayably so). It’s a new game system (with a pen and paper version planned) but the play style, particularly the combat system will be familiar to players of KotOR, with a real-time, pausable, system. As with KotOR and Mass Effect, much of the game play revolves around the multiple companions, who will converse between each other and with you about various things, some exchanges are quite humourous

Depending upon which version you bought, when, and where, there are various DownLoadable Content (DLC) packs, some for free, some paid for, with more in the pipeline. There is also a flash game, Dragon Age: Journeys which can net you some extra DLC items for achieving various goals within it.

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